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Comment by claudeganon | Hacker News Reader

Counter to what you see touted on this website, unions are not solely about securing additional material benefits for workers. They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to reflect this reality.

So while some tech jobs might be quite cushy, I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like dictatorships. It would seems that increasingly, more and more tech workers share this perspective.

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I’m not sure that this is a pro-union stance or not, but I’ve always thought that workers of a public company should be allowed to elect a board representative (number of seats to allocate determined by something associated with the number of employees). Would this help bring that worker view/control to the company?

What you’re describing is codetermination, was driven as policy by unions in various forms across Europe, most notably in Germany:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

> They are and have always been about changing workplaces from top-down, authoritarian models to ones where workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction. They’re about acknowledging that none of these structures function or accomplish anything without labor and shifting their relations of power to reflect this reality.

I’d encourage younger folks who have an idealized view of American unions to check Scorcese’s new movie the Irishman about the Teamsters and Hoffa.

Yes, a Hollywood dramatization of a specific incident in the history of American organized labor is definitely the best place to glean this understanding, as opposed to, you know, reading any of the numerous academic works about the history of US or world labor struggle...

Here, by contrast, is a great podcast on the subject spanning many incidents and movements:

https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/

And another recent great book by Alex Gourevitch, “From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century”

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-slavery-to-the-coo...

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/alex-gourevitch-labo...

“Labor Law for the Rank and Filer” by Staughton Lynd (who has written many great works of labor history) is the book inspiring many tech organizers:

https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=325

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/business/economy/labor-bo...

Academic works like this one by an NYU law professor? https://muse.jhu.edu/book/10740

> Nowhere in the world has organized crime infiltrated the labor movement as effectively as in the United States. Yet the government, the AFL-CIO, and the civil liberties community all but ignored the situation for most of the twentieth century. Since 1975, however, the FBI, Department of Justice, and the federal judiciary have relentlessly battled against labor racketeering, even in some of the nation's most powerful unions.

> Mobsters, Unions, and Feds is the first book to document organized crime's exploitation of organized labor and the massive federal cleanup effort. A renowned criminologist who for twenty years has been assessing the government's attack on the Mafia, James B. Jacobs explains how Cosa Nostra families first gained a foothold in the labor movement, then consolidated their power through patronage, fraud, and violence and finally used this power to become part of the political and economic power structure of Twentieth century urban America.

You can litter this thread with as many comments about organized crime and labor as you like, but it no way describes the entire history of labor struggle in the US and elsewhere or it’s overall bent (you admit this yourself in relation to European unions). And is it actually your supposition that a union at a place like Google is going to be taken over by the mob? Who do you expect to believe this line?

If you want to actually unwind the history of organized crime and unions in the US, you would have to also get into their long-standing ties with intelligence and federal police services, especially as a means to disrupt and purge communists from the labor movement. A good chapter to examine might be what drove Hoover’s odd, counterfactual insistence that the mafia more or less didn’t exist for a good part of his tenure at the FBI. Or the CIA’s Operation Gladio and it’s involvement with the Italian mob.

I didn't say it "describes the entire history of labor struggle." But you were responding to someone who listed his views on the bad things about his experience with unions. Discussions of the merits of unions in the U.S. are incomplete without mentioning their ties to organized crime. (And I strongly suspect that, if those links hadn't existed, unions would be stronger in the U.S. today, as they are in Europe.)

This is not a great argument, since (1) The Irishman is based on what experts seem to believe is a work of total fiction (its subject claims to have been instrumental in the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Assassination, Watergate, the killing of Jimmy Hoffa, and the killing of Joe Gallo), and (2) the industries that were mobbed up when unions were ascendant remain mobbed up now; of course the unions were infiltrated, you couldn't engage with those industries without engaging with their unions.

It's a good movie and all. I just wouldn't draw a lot of public policy lessons from it.

Fair enough. Probably shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from movies and Wikipedia. I find the organized crime involvement in American unions very interesting, though, because from what I’ve read it’s different than the case often is in Europe. I find unions a somewhat interesting alternative to government regulation (such as in Scandinavian countries which have no minimum wage but broad unions). But at the same time I tend to view organized crime as being the most dangerous thing to a civilization.

I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like democracies.

Company X offers to pay me to do job Y. My two options, as I see it, are taking the job and doing Y, or refusing to do Y and therefore not taking the job. I don't understand the logic of "I'll take the job but then refuse to do Y", except if I assume ill-intent from the person taking the job.

What about the logic of collective bargaining? Why should workers have to remain divided and alone, against highly organized capital?

The broader condition of wage-labor is (in the absence of unions) of course though that you agree to some form of top-down power relation or starve and die. Unions contest this broader premise as opposed to your specific one.

> or starve and die

Or start your own business and find your own way to provide for youself outside of the existing system?

The broader condition of society is that you need to produce something of value for them if you desire others to provide things of value to you.

> or starve and die

I reject your strawman argument. FAANG engineers will hardly starve and die if they choose to work somewhere else.

It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation.

You are of course correct that any person is technically free to reject any particular job, but someone with an interest in both continuing to be able to provide for themselves and their family as well as in bringing about structural shifts that would allow for much truer freedom might refuse to perform a particular function for reasons other than ill intent.

>It is better for both individuals and society at large if we are able to not only generate material wealth, but also do so within systems of our own design which allow us to generate said wealth through voluntary cooperation.

There's absolutely nothing stopping people, especially a collective of people who might want to form a union, from pooling their own funds and starting an enterprise based on the values of their own collective design.

>You are of course correct that any person is technically free to reject any particular job, but someone with an interest in both continuing to be able to provide for themselves and their family as well as in bringing about structural shifts that would allow for much truer freedom might refuse to perform a particular function for reasons other than ill intent.

And someone, or a group of people, who've created an enterprise of their own values, are generating value from it and are providing labor opportunities and value to others are free to fire people who outright disagree with said values, or attempt to form an entity of power to dismantle or disorientate those values.

It is incredibly dishonest, and certainly of ill intent, to join or remain within a company or group whose values you strongly disagree with for the purpose of financially benefiting from that group's activities and trying to undermine said values from within.

> It is incredibly dishonest, and certainly of ill intent, to join or remain within a company or group whose values you strongly disagree with for the purpose of financially benefiting from that group's activities and trying to undermine said values from within.

Perhaps, but this is why unions should exist even when things are going well, to prevent them from getting bad in the first place.

> I’ve yet to see any rational or coherent defense of why these (or any) companies should function like democracies.

My experience is that the more someone rambles about "being the only rational one", the more oblivious they actually are.

People want companies to function like democracies, because they feel it's better for the world, or better for them, or both.

The capital don't have to listen to them of course, and the people can then organize and try to enact change in a different way - like voting for particular regulations or something similar.

Since you seem to value "rationality" and power, maybe you should think about how big collectives of people have power, and whether it wouldn't make sense to make some concessions, because otherwise things might get out of control and people like you might end up in a gulag or something.

I don't think most people want to organize to avoid doing job Y that they specifically agreed to do.

The opposite side of your logic, is that if you assume good faith on the side of the job taker, then the want to do the job that they signed up for, and is willing to do what it takes to make sure they are able to do that job in a safe, efficient, and non-soul crushing manner.

In addition, conditions can change from the initial agreement of employment. Lots of stuff about workplace environments are not fully captured in job contracts, and are so subject to change. You don't need to assume bad-faith from a person to understand why the might want to have a say in how things change. After all, they agreed to a job under a certain set of implied environments.

Companies do not have to function like democracies. However, companies that try to harness the moral and ethical motivation of their workers should always be aware of how to keep company actions and goals sufficiently aligned with those of their workers to be able to tap into that extra motivation.

> workers have a say in their company’s work and overall direction.

Is there is an example of how this works in practise. wondering how they get consensus and do workers really want this.

Check out the “All Things Co-Op” podcast that’s part of the “Democracy at Work” project:

https://www.democracyatwork.info/atc

They walk through all of this with actual worker cooperatives and people researching and organizing around cooperative economic models.

If I buy a sewing machine and hire someone to operate it, outside of basic safety rights why should the employee have any say in what I decide should be created with it?

Why shouldn’t they? Does owning a sewing machine suddenly bestow upon you dictatorial powers?

I’m being a bit hyperbolic here, but it’s funny that the circumstances you cite (sewing, basic safety) actually drove unionization in the early 20th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...

Turns out that if you don’t change the relations of power in your workplace, hold your bosses to account, they have a tendency to not be too concerned about your well-being.

> Does owning a sewing machine suddenly bestow upon you dictatorial powers?

Why do you insist in throwing the word "dictatorship" around?

Owning a sewing machine and paying someone to use it on your behalf should absolutely bestow you the power to choose what that person makes for you, while being paid by you, and while using your machine. How can this be controversial?

I would say the premise that owning something gives you unilateral control over the actions of another person has historically and philosophically been quite controversial. Why did peasants revolt over feudal ownership of land? Why did indigenous people revolt against settler colonialism? Why did the American Civil War happen?

> I would say the premise that owning something gives you unilateral control over the actions of another person has historically and philosophically been quite controversial

I disagree. It is not historically controversial for the owner of property to decide what is done with it.

>with it.

With what, the slaves? /s

I don't know if you are trying to be disingenuous or are mocking people that would think this way.

But when someone comes into my house I have some control over what they are allowed to do within my house and I can ask them to leave with the support of the law if they don't obey my wishes.

When I enter a voluntary employment agreement and give an employee access to my equipment the same thing applies.

You're conflating ownership of people with ownership of a tool & voluntary employment. That's a pretty bad-faith argument to make.

> I would say the premise that owning something gives you unilateral control over the actions of another person

You're conveniently ignoring the part in which I'm also paying the other person to do something, after the other person freely agreed to do said thing in exchange for being paid. Would you mind replying to what I'm actually saying?

> Owning a sewing machine and paying someone to use it on your behalf should absolutely bestow you the power to choose what that person makes for you

Let's take a look at this. Your contributions to the end product are:

- Owning a sewing machine

- Paying someone to use it

Their contributions are:

- Making the thing (say, sewing a shirt)

I think there is an inherent tension between thinking about which of these is more valuable. Of course the sewing machine owners and payers are all going “Hey, the sewing machine belongs to us. You got compensated for your work, that should end your involvement with it. You can't tell us kind of clothes we should be making!”; whereas the people who sew the shirts are going “Without our collective work, you're going to be able to sew maybe one shirt a day, and you don't even know how to sew. So listen to us!”.

The increasing interest in unions (FAANG is hardly a good representative of jobs across the software industry, let alone the entire US) seems to indicate that the needle of society in general has moved more too far in advancing interests of the sewing machine, and the people who sew don't have enough of a say in how things are done.

There's inevitably going to be conflict between then owner of the sewing machine and someone who makes the thing - because when the thing gets sold, the money gets redistributed between owner of the machine and whoever made the thing.

When one gets more money, the other gets less. There is no way out of this, as long as owner of the machine and whoever makes the thing are different people.

Because they want to be able to defend themselves from you and people like you (who own the means of living) from abusing and exploiting them.

Why do you mind if they have a say? If you don't plan on abusing and exploiting them, there's no harm, right?

EDIT: to put it into words I would think someone like you might understand better (power and money instead of empathy and solidarity) - because if you don't let them have a say, and exploit them, you might end up in a gulag, on guillotine or in wherever mass grave Mao put landlords.

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewars. Once a thread gets to the gulags it's never coming back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Let's flip the scenario. Someone comes to you and pays you to borrow your sewing machine. Then by your logic, you should not have any say in what they do with the sewing machine. It seems you are claiming that if A pays B, then A has complete say in what happens.

From a third party perspective, this is just weird. Society sees two people associating, one providing labor, that other capital, no matter how money is flowing within the association. Weirdly enough our system only allows capital owners to have any say in the running of the system (via shares and the board). Within this system, unions are one way in which the owners of labor get a say in the running of the corporation.

> Someone comes to you and pays you to borrow your sewing machine. Then by your logic, you should not have any say in what they do with the sewing machine

Yes, generally there is a contract that stipulated what can and can't be done with the sewing machine so that the machine is not completely destroyed.

Generally employment contracts do not give employees the right to do whatever they want with the sewing machine.

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